Embodiments of the present invention relate to test and measurement instruments, and more particularly, to a test and measurement instrument including a user interface having a move mode.
Conventional test and measurement instruments, such as oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, and the like, offer few capabilities for adjusting the user interface. For example, it is difficult or impossible to rearrange or resize different parts of the user interface on the display. Although current user interface paradigms exist in general purpose computers and mobile devices, such paradigms are not well suited for test and measurement instruments. The various windows on such paradigms are quite often not related to each other. In contrast, the windows or waveform containers of a test and measurement instrument usually have some common relationship to the workspace. Moreover, test and measurement instruments are often located on benches that are not level with the end-user. Sometimes they are located high on a shelf. In addition, when taking measurement in the field, for example, the test and measurement instruments may be located in a vehicle or in other difficult settings.
Furthermore, the workspace on the display of a test and measurement instrument can include a variety of user-settable criteria, data objects, trigger points, measurement information, and the like, which in the case of a traditional user interface, can accidentally be erased or altered when attempting to manipulate the windows or containers in the workspace. Such accidental alterations to the workspace can result in inaccurate waveform measurements, lost time, or in some cases, even catastrophic system failures due to misunderstandings or inexact analysis of waveforms associated with the system being measured.
Accordingly, there remains a need for providing an improved user interface designed particularly for test and measurement instruments. What is needed is an intuitive touch screen and/or mouse activated interface, which provides sufficient flexibility to arrange the layout of the waveform views and related information in a manner that is easily controlled by the end-user, even in less-than-ideal environments, while ensuring that settings and other information are not unintentionally erased or altered. Embodiments of the invention address these and other limitations in the prior art.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of the inventive concepts will become more readily apparent from the following detailed description of the example embodiments, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.